


Ejecta

by Sharksdontsleep



Category: The Expanse (TV)
Genre: Dubious Consent, M/M, Plants, Sex Pollen, gravity - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-04
Updated: 2017-06-04
Packaged: 2018-11-09 00:50:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11093463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sharksdontsleep/pseuds/Sharksdontsleep
Summary: "No, I'm not wearing goggles in the greenhouse. Why would anyone wear goggles in the greenhouse?"The first rule of space is wear your PPE.





	Ejecta

**Author's Note:**

> I nearly tagged this 'dirty talk' but that'd be an unforgivable pun. Alex has an Earth fetish. And a space fetish. 
> 
> dontsleepsharks at gmail and tumblr. Feedback including concrit welcome.

"Oh, shit," he hears Prax say, and then there's the spray of something in his eyes.

"Seal it up." Holden, over the comms. "Now."

There's a klaxon whooping, and the clunking sounds of pressure barriers in place and it's lucky he already set their course for Tycho, because whatever it is that's gotten into his eyes burns like the dickens.

"Alex, buddy, you doing OK?" Holden asks. He's trying to sound soothing. Alex is _fucked_.

"What is this shit?" Alex says.

"Nothing," Prax says too fast. "I mean, nothing as long as you don't get it - you were wearing PPE, right?"

"No, I'm not wearing goggles in the greenhouse. Why would anyone wear goggles in the greenhouse? This is near the ventilation intakes and -"

"Yes, I change the filters," Prax is saying, not to Alex, but to the others. Answering a question Alex didn't hear. "And it doesn't stay potent for more than a few minutes outside of the plant. It's not even harmful airborne, just into membranes and it's just ..."

Alex's skin feels like it's on too tight or maybe he's overheating. Right, he's in the greenhouse. Grow lights. "Turn the cooling on," he says. His voice sounds steady, at least to his own ears. Not like panic. Calm.

"Temp's the same as it was and - oh. You feeling OK, Alex? Your thermal ticked up almost a degree in the past minute." Naomi, and her voice is sweet in his ears. "I'm turning on cooling."

Prax chimes in, something about the plants and temperature tolerance, and transpiration rate, and maximizing photosynthetic yield, and and and ...

It occurs to Alex that everyone is talking much faster than he can listen. And his jumpsuit is on and it's like a casing he desperately wants to shed. There's a zipper, of course, because everything in space is zippers and Velcro and nothing that could unfasten because of sudden changes in pressure or shatter upon impact.

"Uh, Alex," he hears, distantly, and he feels so much better. It's humid in the greenhouse, of course, water condensing on plants' leaves, and he runs his finger over the blade of one, watching the water collecting rivulets and then dripping off into the soil below.

It smells like dirt, what he imagines Earth smells like, not the red dust of Martian soil or the hydroponic farms but a real wet organic smell. He rubs some on his palm and then brings it to his face. Prax smells like that, sometimes, and he gets sudden image of Prax, fresh from the greenhouse, collapsing into his usual chair in the mess and then Alex kneeling between his legs, pressing his face into Prax's palms and he's not one of those scientists with soft hands, and dirt would catch in his calluses and -

"Alex," Amos says. "You're talking."

"Is he in any danger?" he hears Naomi say, and he shouldn't be sweet on her like he is, her and Holden too, because it's bound to get awkward and -

"Only of embarrassing himself." Prax, and he sounds ... their voices are all like clear cool water down the back of his neck and there's chatter - something about the video feed and cutting it off because he's naked. Why would Prax be naked?

His jumpsuit is piled on the floor. Oh, right, they probably mean him.

"What do you mean there's a chance of -" Holden, voice exasperated, and then Alex's comm goes suddenly, specifically, silent.

It's not quiet in the greenhouse, or it is, but a kind of quiet that feels busy. The creak of the shelves as the ship makes minute course adjustments - and he hopes they aren't trying to steer his _baby_ \- the drip of water from tubing systems into the soil beds, a drip of more water onto the humidifier, a hiss as it vaporizes, and the answering hum of the condensers around the vents.

Everything carefully controlled and yet it feels - wild? Vegetal? Green, anyway, green and wet and like the sponge of dirt under his hands. He's never been in a forest, except at a VR show once, images of wet Earth forests as illicit and taboo as Earther pornography on Mars. The squat solidity of trees.

It'd been like this except this is more _real_ , all his senses alert and maybe he's not noticing any of it so much as all of it because, huh, his dick has apparently started to notice he's naked and alone, and with only the plants as spectators.

The plants, and Amos, looking at him through the porthole.

His comm buzzes, not the combined noise of the multichannel but one clear alert. Amos, breathing on the other side of the door. "Doc says you need this," he says, holding up a syringe. "And the second dose 20 minutes later. It takes 5 minutes to cycle the lock. I'm coming in."

 _Don't_ Alex should say. Vaguely, he thinks there's danger - Amos locks a mask over his mouth and goggles across his eyes, and Alex could put his clothes back on. _Don't_ he should say, though his body is looking at Amos, targeting there like he's locking to fire a missile, and there's wetness too, the humidity of the greenhouse but other moisture, under his arms, across his upper lip, and a slicker kind from his cock, more interested than he thinks he should be in front of one of his crewmates. But the thought is distant, easily disregarded.

"Doesn't bother me none," Amos says, now on this side of the door, the magnets kicking into place, sealing them in.

He's got a hypospray and he issues it onto Alex's arm, a little wet ejection that Alex feels more than he should. It's possible he's reacting to whatever the plants emitted more strongly than he realized, particularly when the deep moist soil around the plants is beginning to look tempting.

"Probably don't want to do that, brother," Amos says, and he's still got the mask on, but he's begun to sweat too, or the drop in temperature is causing water to condense on his skin.

No, that's not right, Alex thinks, and then tries to recall every lesson he's had on water and dew point and cooling systems, when Amos touches him on the arm, right where the spray went in, and the muscle is tender, or more tender than Alex remembers other injection sites being, because he definitely moans.

"I could -" Amos says, and he nods toward where Alex's cock is slapping against his belly. "Lend a hand."

A hand, and Amos has big hands, thick fingers that he's seen operate on the delicate machinery of the Roci, always respectful of his baby, the way she responds to Amos' and Naomi's touch, and Alex imagines himself, suddenly, as part of the ship, an extension of it, not steel and plating and wires, but the necessity of an organic fixture, a outcropping of its neural network, as if his fate is to have its wires creep into him, connecting him to it.

Amos' hands are on his shoulders now, steadying, and Alex isn't feeling unsteady, exactly, just pliable, like he's soil and Amos is making divots in which to plant something. He imagines Amos dipping his fingers into the dirt of the trellis', the smell of it on his fingers.

Alex has seen images of Baltimore, a city made of concrete wasting into a fetid bay, the pollution of 20 billion humans lapping at it, dissolving it. When was the first time Amos smelled real dirt?

Amos, who's solid as any tree, and Alex reaches and runs his fingers over the soil around a plant that might be a bean plant, its stem already heavy with pods. He brings it to his nose and then holds out for Amos, who doesn't remove his mask, but leans in, gamely, and says, "Smells like dirt," in that way of his. From Holden, it'd be sardonic, from Naomi apologetic or pitying, but from Amos it's flat statement of being. Dirt smells like dirt.

Alex doesn't know what they inoculated him with, or why it needs a second injection, but the pace of his blood picks up, and his cock seems to thrum with it. A hand would help, though a mouth would be better, deep and wet like loam, or perhaps the push of fingers inside him until he ejects and yes, that's what he needs.

"Seems like you got dosed pretty good," Amos says, and Alex puts his fingers in his mouth because that damn mask across Amos' impedes much of his plan, and Amos' eyes widen slightly at the side and he says, "Hold on."

He fiddles with the fastenings on the mask, enough that Alex can hear him spit into his palm, and then he's sliding his hand down to Alex's ass. Alex should ask - is this what he wants, or is this some extension of Amos' need to protect him, or a thousand other questions, one of which Amos answers by grunting and saying, "Been a while. Let me know if I hurt you."

It doesn't hurt, at all. Instead, it's a slow, radiation of heat, the wide stretch of his fingers, the addition of a second finger to the knuckle, and Alex doesn't know if he's got the stamina to do much more than lean against one of the grow shelves and moan, so that's what he does.

Amos fucks him with his fingers like he does most other things, bluntly and competently and unceasingly, and Alex shouldn't be doing this, at all, shouldn't be spreading his legs further apart or wrapping a hand around himself or inhaling the cool odor of the greenhouse or arching back until Amos gets the hint and leans, body weight on him, trapping him between fingers and dirt and the feel of Amos pressing him down.

He'd fucked like this, sometimes, back on Mars, in a few of the simulated high grav VRs, the kind where they wrapped and weighted you until you felt like it was 1G, the kind where you couldn't see who or what was fucking you. Now, he feels heavy and light at the same time, trapped from floating away by Amos' bulk and yet relieved at the constant pressure in him and around him.

Earthers must feel this way, the down down down sensation of real full grav pulling them home, and he wonders what it'd be like to really fuck in that environment, to pin someone or be pinned, and he comes, suddenly, directly, all on his chest and belly and thighs, dripping enough that some cascades down his balls and onto Amos' hand.

Alex hears the brush of fabric, Amos wiping his hand on his jumpsuit, but he doesn't move other than that, just leaning against Alex and Alex can hear him breathing, even through the mask.

"Better?" Amos asks, like Alex had been administered meds, and his dick is flagging, but not completely soft and he reaches to give it a small comforting tug, only to have Amos supplant his hand with his much larger one. "Still feel good?" and Alex nods, numbly, and lets him wring the last of it out of him until his balls feel like they can't issue any more.

It occurs to Alex that he should reciprocate, that dropping to his knees, even on the cold tiling, and peeling that zipper that holds together Amos' jumpsuit down, that Amos' dick would probably fit into his empty-feeling mouth, that he wants to press his nose into the flat muscle that makes up Amos' abdomen, that he has not, in all of this, asked Amos what he wants.

"Can I -" he asks, nodding to Amos' crotch, and he kneels down, still feeling heavy, like they've gone into high burn, all his limbs like an arrow pointing down toward the Roci's center, and Amos shrugs and says, "If you want, but uh, I don't - You can try."

Amos isn't hard when he opens his jumpsuit, though he seems interested enough when Alex sucks on him. He doesn't get hard, though, after a minute of it, after two minutes, though Alex's sense of time has gone syrupy, and pulls off and licks instead, around the head and below, then supplements with his hand and -

"It ain't personal," Amos says, after a while. "Feels good. You can keep at it if you want, but uh, kinda don't expect much in the way of reaction."

"Are you not -" Alex pulls off, and glances down at himself, at his midsection gone a little soft from beer, at his cock that's returned to mostly normal, the drying streaks of come beginning to itch. "Interested in, uh, men?"

"It's not that," Amos says, but doesn't go much further. "I gotta shoot you again, bud," and he produces a second hypospray, injecting it on the opposite shoulder, Alex still on his knees in front of him.

At some point, whatever it is fogging his mind will dissipate. At some point, the hot desperate feel of this will wear off an he'll realize he's on the ground, having gotten off on the smell of wet dirt and faked gravity, his friend's disinterested cock in his mouth.

It must be happening, because there's a hot wash of shame over him until Amos says, "Hey," soft, like he sometimes does if he finds Alex asleep in his crash couch, "I, uh, stopped being able to. A while ago."

"Oh," Alex says, because what else is there to say. "Did you not want to -" and another wave of shame, of having manipulated Amos into this, of having taken advantage of Amos' _Amos-ness_ , his need to follow and protect even if it costs him himself.

"It's not that," Amos says. "That part was - I liked that part. You're ... " and he seems to search for the right word. "You feel good," he says, finally. "Warm. Soft - not like that, I just mean. I'd do it again. If you let me."

"Oh," Alex says. "I would. Again."

"OK," Amos says. "Just, uh, maybe not here?" He reaches for Alex's jumpsuit, and Alex puts it on, quickly, still recoiling at how much he's begun itching, and thank god for the Roci's real showers and loss-resistant water reclamation systems.

They're almost ready to leave, to listen for the complex mechanism of the lock to unseal, when Amos produces a small bag from his jumpsuit pocket and uses it to take a small handful of dirt. "Seems like we might want this," he says, and smiles as the lock finally snicks open.


End file.
